Dubai: The Latest Architecture and News

Polish practice 8+8 Concept Studio has released images of a proposed underwater tennis court planned to be built off the coast of Dubai. Staged beneath an expansive glass roof that would put marine life on display, the radical proposal is being called into question as engineers debate its feasibility. As the Daily Mail reports, the scheme seems unlikely due to the challenges of manufacturing glass sheets large enough to span a tennis court and ensure that the structure is impact resistant. Refracting light is also a valid concern.

The Dubai Design District (d3) has tapped Foster + Partners to design its masterplan's second phase. Spanning one million-square-feet, the new development will be a "Creative Community" that will serve as a "thriving cultural epicenter" within d3, and an "incubator" for emerging designers an artists.

“This is an exciting initiative, which supports young creatives, and allows Dubai’s design scene to flourish from within," says Gerard Evenden, Studio Head at Foster + Partners.

Witness the urban life of five stunning metropolises through the lens of Rob Whitworth with these "Vimeo Staff Pick" hyperlapse videos. From the unexplored urban life of the North Korean capital Pyongyang to the towering skyline of Dubai, each video explores an incredible sequence of daily living in cities across the planet. See more, including video from Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai, after the break.

London firm Leslie Jones Architecture has received a commission from Dubai Airports for Al Maktoum International Airport at the yet unbuilt Dubai World Centre. The latest firm to join development on the 140-square-kilometer site, it is hoped that Leslie Jones will deliver a mixed-use transit hub to cater for burgeoning local tourism and aviation industries.

Learn more about the project after the break.

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“See the future, create the future,” this is the motto of Dubai’s newly unveiled “Museum of the Future.” The metallic oblong-structure, planned for a corner lot in Dubai’s central financial district next to the Emirates Towers on Sheikh Zayed Road, is said to become “an incubator for ideas and real designs, a driver for innovation and a global destination for inventors and entrepreneurs.”

"The world is entering a new era of accelerated knowledge and great technological revolutions,” tweeted United Arab Emirates prime minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. "We aim to lead in that era, not to follow and lag behind. The Museum of the Future is the first step of many to come, marking the beginning of great achievements."

Holograms, robotics and 3-D printing will play a crucial role in the structure’s realization. Learn more and watch a video fly-through the building after the break.

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As any self-respecting world city now knows, when the time comes to change the calenders, you'd better also have an iconic building from which to hang some fireworks. With people all over the world looking out for the most impressive New Year's celebrations, we've picked the most impressive architecturally-focused displays. Not surprisingly, Dubai - the world capital of "go big or go home" - probably had the most impressive show of the year, with a combined light-and-firework show to turn the Burj Khalifa into the world's largest celebratory canvas. However, a special mention goes to Paris' Arc de Triomphe, where a tasteful 14-minute light mapping display paid homage to the city's other great architectural works, from the Eiffel Tower to the Centre Pompidou, before moving onto stylized scenes of Paris life to bring in the new year.

Continue after the break for all the videos of the world's best New Year celebrations.

As a tribute to their 60th anniversary, Guinness World Records has published a video about the Burj Khalifa. Towering 828-meters (27,160-feet) above the downtown Dubai, the Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM)-designed structure has been the world’s tallest building since its opening in 2010.

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Following the recent announcement of Aedas' demerger into two separate companies - one retaining the Aedas name and the other now known as AHR - we spoke to Keith Griffiths, Chairman of Aedas' global board and a practicing architect for close to three decades. The company, which was recently ranked by the Architects' Journal as the 5th largest and most influential practice in the world, have now moved their head office to London's Chandos Place and are championing a new approach to urban regeneration in the UK's capital. Alongside discussing how an international practice of Aedas' scale successfully operates, Griffiths offered his insight into how the future looks for European cities based on a tried and tested Asian model of densification.

To find out how Aedas approach sustainability in flourishing Asian markets, as well as the significance of the 'urban hub' typology for London's metropolitan future, read the interview in full after the break.

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Developers Dubai Holding have announced their plans to build the 'Mall of the World' a new 48 million square foot tourist district in Dubai that will host the world's largest mall, a new cultural district, a theme park and 20,000 hotel rooms. What's more, the district's 7km street network will be covered by a retractable roof during the summer months, creating the world's first "temperature controlled city".

Read on after the break for all the details

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Check out the awesome video above in which a souped-up drone soars over the Burj Khalifa (the world's tallest tower), filming unbelievable aerial views of fast-developing Dubai. The drone, which has an extraordinary range of up to 3 kilometers, is flown by Team BlackSheep, who have many similar videos of cities such as London and New York on their YouTube Channel. Enjoy!

Story via TechCrunch

Humanity’s ability to construct and change an urban landscape is incredible, but rarely do we get to see that interaction at full scale. Beno Saradzic’s "BEYOND: Memoirs in a Timelapse" captures just that. Taken from more than two years of footage from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this film showcases hourly transformations wrought on some of the city’s most famous buildings, such as the Al Bahar Towers and Burj Khalifa.

BLUE TAPE, the winning proposal of an international competition to design an Architecture School adjacent to the American University in Dubai, “is a vertical re-imagining of the typical architecture school typology.” Submitted by USC alumni Evan Shieh and Ali Chen, BLUE TAPE, which transforms a horizontal pin-up space into a vertical 'conceptual connector,' is inspired by USC's 'Blue Tape Reviews' (their method of pinning up work for design reviews).

Dubai has been selected as the host city for the Expo 2020, besting bids from Turkey, Brazil and Russia. This means HOK will now move forward as a lead designer by refining the site's 438-hectare master plan, which was inspired by Dubai’s “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future” Expo theme.

"This win is a testament to the commitment of the UAE citizens to create a prosperous future for their country and region," said Daniel Hajjar, HOK's managing principal in Dubai. "We are proud to have been the lead designer of the Expo site and to be associated with producing a winning entry for the UAE so that this great country can continue to boost its reputation on a global stage."

More than 25 million is expected to attend during the Expo’s short, six-month duration. This will be the first time a Middle Eastern city to host this international exhibition in its 160-year history. Read on for more details on HOK's design.

Scheduled to open its doors in 2016, the new office building and hotel designed by Zaha Hadid for Dubai is already under construction. Dubbed "Opus," the new tower will be the first mixed-use building to be developed in the city as two individual structures and conceived as a single cube formed by a conventional slabs stacked vertically and served by a circulation core.

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NASA, in cooperation with TIME and Google, has unveiled startling timelapse images of Earth from orbit collected by NASA's Landsat program since 1984. This program, created not for spycraft but for monitoring the way in which humans are rapidly altering the surface of the planet, consists of eight satellites that have collected millions of pictures in the course of two generations. When sifted through, cleaned up and stitched together, these pictures come together to create a high-definition slideshow that reveals some of the drastic changes our planet is undergoing - most notably through widespread urbanization.

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